I am a Senior Political Contributor at Forbes and the official 'token lefty,' as the title of the page suggests. However, writing from the 'left of center' should not be confused with writing for the left as I often annoy progressives just as much as I upset conservative thinkers. In addition to the pages of Forbes.com, you can find me every Saturday morning on your TV arguing with my more conservative colleagues on "Forbes on Fox" on the Fox News Network and at various other times during the week serving as a liberal talking head on other Fox News and Fox Business Network shows. I also serve as a Democratic strategist with Mercury Public Affairs.

Guns: What Do We Do Now?

And while many of us cannot quite understand the strong feelings of those who believe that ownership of combat style weapons is not only appropriate but is a necessary extension of an individual’s right to defend their household against enemies—foreign and domestic—our lack of understanding does not negate such an individual’s profound right to believe that this is a necessity.

While anti-gun advocates correctly note that these horrible events do not happen—or happen with dramatically less frequency—in other nations where guns are harder to access, we must acknowledge the pro-gun perspective noting that citizens in these other countries are left defenseless should their own government, or some other government, ever seek to turn against those citizens.

No matter how staunch and defined your feelings may be when it comes to regulating guns, or your desire to see these weapons disappear altogether from our society, somewhere in the back of your mind you must recognize that those who are passionate in their support of gun ownership do possess a few points—grounded in both logic and law—that support their position. If we are to find common ground and a way forward in addressing horrible events such as what transpired on Friday, we are going to need to bring these points to the forefront of our understanding.

At the same time, those who view relatively unlimited gun ownership as an essential and non-assailable right granted to us all in the Bill of Rights must begin to better understand and appreciate why anti-gun advocates simply cannot see the sense and logic behind making combat style weapons and high capacity magazine clips available to civilian purchasers.

These folks must appreciate that, to the anti-gun advocate, the notion that you must own combat style weapons to stand up against the potential tyranny of your own government, or another’s, fails when one considers the overwhelming power government would bring against you should this ever become government’s intent. Thus, your ability to possess such combat style firearms, magazine clips, etc., becomes largely symbolic and, to the extent that your easy access to this type of weapon facilitates access for those who should never get them, the trade off just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Pro-gun proponents must also come to an understanding that our Second Amendment rights can be protected without being twisted in a way that perverts any rational understanding of that right. As many have heard over these past few days, we have long recognized that there are limits to our enumerated rights —limits based on what is required for a society to function.

We know that nobody has a First Amendment right to scream ‘fire’ in a crowded theater when there is no such fire. Why? Because the Supreme Court wisely understood that the Founders, in codifying these important rights, never intended them to be used to bring harm to the people in that theater when someone stupidly decides that it would be amusing or meet some perverse objective by causing a panic.

In similar fashion, while our Founders did intend for Americans to have a right to defend their households from attack by possessing firearms, nobody should rationally arrive at the conclusion that the rights provided by our Second Amendment were ever intended to grant the right to bear arms for the purpose of opening fire in the same crowded theater when our First Amendment right has been limited to falsely vocalize the word ‘fire’.

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What a magnum opus, Rich. Give victims legal recourse to get “revenge”. That’s one thing you can do. I dont remember if the Colombine shooters got their guns from their parents like Lanza did. But lets say they did, and I lost my child in that school, me and a group of parents should at the very least have the legal recourse to take away the gun owners rights to bare arms…forever. I dont care if her crazy son took her legal guns. I want “revenge”. I cant take it out on her son. He’s dead. And I know she is dead, too. But if she were not, as a victim, I should be able to retaliate. Also, if youre a gun lover that must have an M4 carbine in your house….fine…but now if you want to load it, you have to buy the ammo from a few licensed places that must be insured and they are liable for any damages caused by those bullets. Guns dont kill. People and bullets do! I should have legal recourse to take my anger and loss out on someone. Right now, these people have no one. If a member of your family kills a member of mine, and the gunman is dead or in jail, and he or she used your gun, I should have the legal recourse to take away your right to a gun. And I should be able to do that because you were not responsible with your gun. If my kid takes my car and runs someone over, I am going to be sued. We should do the same with guns. And make owners of those carbines pay through the nose for insurance, in case something like this happens. Legal recourse. Step one in gun control, and I think everyone can agree on it. Even the NRA. It doesnt take away the guns. It makes the owners more responsible, and makes owning assault weapons more costly for the buyer AND the seller.

I’m having trouble seeing how suing the parents of a kid who does something awful would do anything to prevent the next problem. Indeed, i doubt that holding a manufacturer responsible would make a dent as even the loss of a lawsuit at the hands of affected parents would not make a tiny dent in the profits involved. Retaliation is one thing – prevention is very different. I have no problem with you being able to sue if retaliation is the objective, but, in most of these horrid scenarios, the weapons did not come from a parent as it did in this instance.

This country is full of people who want to ‘sue, sue, sue’ but what good is that to the parents who lost their little one? Would 50 million dollars make them ok? I think not!! Prevention is as the adage goes, the best cure and Rick has covered the most popular solutions, none of which have been followed up on. Hopefully this time something will be done. As for the parents/gun owners/sellers of the guns/bullets is concerned, if they have broken the law then fine, they should be punished but they cannot be held responsible for other people’s actions, that’s just ridiculous!

Legal recourse, liabilty, and insurance for bodily harm is a step in the right direction. Its something that will make owni g carbiine assault rifles harder, more costly, and more risky. If lanza had a hand gun n not a carbine like an m 16 you would not have thzt kind of slaughter. Bis mom wouldve thought twice about owning one if she had to pay five grand a year for bodily harm liabilty.

If someone killed my kid i school…i want to reataliate.making gun ownership a liabilty will take more military style guns out of ppls homes. We r never banning guns outright in this country so forgst about it.

Kenneth, I’m glad to hear that you are much like myself and disregard the greater good for a sense of security. I’m glad that I too don’t want to solve the problem but simply pretend it went away. I want to thank you for your noble insight and pray all laws are created equal to such selfish motives. We should never make laws off of objective evidence but craft narrow minded legislation to make us “feel” better. You may be entitled to free speech but to impose your unfounded religious beliefs… is nothing more than tyranny. Kenneth Rapoza – supporting plantation politics one ignorant belief after another.

Well, the idea of making someone buy a liability insurance if they buy a semi-automatic weapon is appealing. But if you are only talking about holding someone personally liable in a massacre without some legal obligation to buy the insurance when they buy the gun, this will fail. Nobody believes that their kid is going to do something like this so I think it becomes pretty unrealistic.

No one believes their kid will drive drunk and kill people in vehicular homocide either but if your son runs over my gorgeous teen daughter and kills her in your car you better have a good lawyer cuz im gonna sue you for everything that you own. I can do that to drunks. I cant do it to killers and the parents that armed them.

I think that is all true. I think what is throwing readers is that it is difficult to see how this approach will stop these incidents from happening. God forbid that this would happen to your daughter, I know you realize that all the money in the world could never compensate. And more relevant to the conversation, your lawsuit is not going to stop someone else’s kid from getting drunk and killing someone else’s daughter.

“If lanza had a hand gun n not a carbine like an m 16 you would not have thzt kind of slaughter”

Not true. This deranged young man could have easily caused the same amount of death and injury with a shotgun, shotgun and handguns, or just handguns. Or he could have killed as many or more innocents with an automobile or a can of gasoline and a match, both items being used far more often for such malevolent criminal violence.

Given this article’s been online for some time, and the Mighty Righty’s haven’t come in yet, I guess you may have a quorum on your op-ed. Imagine that. As a new parent, this sort of news used to sadden me, now it saddens and terrifies.

As someone who’s very familiar with weapons, I remain nervous about having a gun in my own home. As an avid country explorer, I use a basic 4×4 / SUV analogy to explain (only in part why): If you install a winch on the front of your 4×4, you’re more likely to get into a situation where you need to use it.

I could not agree more on the multiple clip argument, and the assault rife argument. If you want to use them for sport or target practice, you should not have an issue with additional training, certification, background checks, limits on the numbers of weapons as a single address, spot checks over time, increased licensing and permit purchasing for higher calibre weapons.

I am also a strong proponent of game regulation – with advances in technology, and the scenes now appearing so real how can it no de-sensitise the mind of a kid, youth or certain adults. A glib example: I just watched Skyfall in the cinema and came out feeling I was a whiz with a Walther PPK and could J Turn any car I liked (as well as being irresistible to women, something I was quickly corrected on later).

My friend recently explained how games are influencing his late teen step-sons: it’s the first thing they do in the morning and the last thing at night. His regular turning off of the internet to ‘force’ family time results in anger and throwing things around the house, behaviour he compares to that of an addict.

I appreciate I am not adding much to this, I just can’t stroll past a comment box.

PS: Great point about the efficacy of small arms in the event of a government turn: Unless you have several tanks, a nuclear sub in the Skymall ornamental wishing well, have littered the shrubbery & rose beds with mines & razor wire, you’re simply out of luck.

We can debate the gun control topic and mental health topics (and believe me I will), and I will respect any legislation enacted after debate. I just don’t want any knee jerk legislation to go though only because of a single tragic event, like what dianne feinstein is pushing for.

I really hope people have learned their lesson after the insanely liberty infringing legislation that was passed after 9/11. also, when the government had a knee jerk reaction to 9/11, a million iraqis died and well over 4 trillion dollars have been wasted on the iraq war.

We need to actually talk about the statistics and reasoning of events like this rationally and objectively. revenge and emotional responses are fine for individuals, but the government needs to be above that.